Participatory society and Contradictions of Socialization

Introduction

Achievement of the viable participatory society through direct political and economic democracy of concerned people has been the long-term aim of emancipatory social movements in modern epoch. The idea of such alternative to exploitative and autocratic capitalist social formation, has been also the focal point of interest of “left” oriented social scientists. Most of them underline the complex social, economic, political, cultural and technological conditions that should be fulfilled within enterprises and in enterprises’ surroundings in order to set the democratic participatory development process into motion.

I would like to elaborate in this paper the thesis that intrinsically contradictory character of the process of socialization of productive forces is the main source of the cyclical schifts between etatistic and market model of regulation of social relationships between 1) owners of porduction means and producers; 2) agricultural, industrial, and services producers; 3) producers and consumers. Contradictory social interests involved in socialization process account for the fact that periods of economic democracy’s emancipatory breakthroughs, are followed by periods of its repressive setbacks.

Ownership transformation models

Process of socialization of productive forces in society with predominantly capitalist social relations of reproduction, means first of all the transformation of the private ownership of land, machines and other production instruments into some form of collective ownership.

It is well known fact that abolishment of the capitalist private property in all countries of “real socialism” after the October revolution and World War II, assumed in the beginning the form of the confiscation and nationalization of the basic production means by the bureaucratic state apparatus. It assumed the role of entrepreneur that performed centralized planning, investment, management and distribution of production and products, covering the costs of social services and public spending through centralized budget.

Hierarchically centralized concentration and plan distribution of entire available material and human resources was hardly avoidable in conditions of foreign armed intervention and civil war devastation. The lawful social effect of such etatisation of private ownership, however, was creation of the new ruling class of collective owners. This social group, politically organized within the ruling party, monopolized both political and economic decision power. This monopoly itself presented the class privilege even under the ideal hypothesis that members of the collective owners class never misused it for self-enrichment.

Due to protracted appropriation of entire “surplus” from agricultural and industrial direct producers by the state authorities, direct producers soon lost the interest to increase their labor productivity. The slogan “nobody can pay me so little as little I can work” conveys the message that direct producers felt as hired hands in relation to the state as the only employer. State ownership thus led into wasteful, inefficace, bad quality and stagnating production.

The method for overcoming this stagnation crisis of the centralized administrative command system of state enterprises’ management, repeatedly was sought for in the decentralization of the economic decision making to the level of basic production units. Their greater autonomy in relation to state organs was accompanied by the renewal of the elements of the market regulation of social relations. These elements were limited to freer exchange of merchandises. The rationale of this renewal was the hope that they could provide more objective indicators of real social needs for indicative planning of production. It was also expected that they would be better regulator of scarce investment resources’ allocation than imperative central planning of the physical scope and structure of production. Various forms of moral stimulation for rising productivity were everywhere substituted by material animation. The consumption fond that remained under control of basic production unit was somewhat increased. Cooperative forms of ownership were renewed and encouraged especially in agricultural concerns, small industries and services.

The right of employees in basic production units to use and manage collective property, demonstrated the tendency to transform itself into specific form of group ownership of the employed. The rising group of “technocrats”, managers, specialists and technicians, strengthened its role in the control of the strategic decision-making within the enterprise.

Cooperative and group forms of socialization of private ownership did not and can not transcend capitalist relations. Group owners and cooperative members are compelled to behave like capitalists. They earn profit on the market, lend investment capital and hire labor force of those who are not co-owners of the group property or permanently employed in particular basic production unit. The distribution according to the law of exchange value between production units that have structurally and politically caused unequal production conditions, progressively increase economic inequality between social groups and regions.

Described contradiction between the imperatives of the centralized accumulation for enlarged social reproduction, on the one hand, and the demand for decentralization and increased social consumption, on the other, present the main source of the cyclical renewal of the conflict between two models of social and economic relations’ regulation in all former countries of “real socialism”. The first one is Preobrajenski’s “etatistic” conception of centrally planned regulation at the expense of agriculture in industrially undeveloped countries. The second one is Bukharin’s “new economic policy” of balanced growth and market mediated exchange between industrial and agricultural sector and within industrial sector (Vratuša-Žunjić, V., 1991)

The case of former Yugoslavia

The “new economic policy” regulation model and group and cooperative form of socialization were the most implemented and elaborated in Yugoslavia since early fifties. This happened after the 1948 conflict of Yugoslav communist leaders headed by Tito with USSR and Informbiro communist leaders headed by Stalin. Conflict was among other things related to confronted conceptions of intra- and inter-national economic and political relations within “socialist community”. In the period after the enactment of the 1950 Basic law on management of state economic enterprises and higher economic associations by the work collective, production means were constitutionally redefined as the ownership of entire society. It was intended that basic production means be used by associations of employed workers that worked with them and paid to the society one part of their entire income for the covering of general social needs. After paying respective tax, they were free to decide autonomously about the investment or distribution of the net-income. The share of every individual in the net-income of the work organization was supposed to depend on the quantity, intensity, and quality of the work done. Self-managers thus had the usus and fructus rights. They did not have, however, abusus right to alienate these production means (to sell, bestow as present or give as inheritance to others not working with them). The domain of “decision-making by working people and citizens” was several times constitutionally expanded to educational, cultural, scientific, health, social care institutions and territorially defined socio-political communities.

Through institutionalization of "self-management deliberation and agreement" procedures for planning and satisfaction of common and general needs in the commune, it was attempted to overcome insufficiencies of both state and market forms of enlarged reproduction regulation.

In theory and practical realization the self-management concept of socialization remained unclear, because "entire society" was insufficiently defined titular of ownership. Instead of more precise determination, soon appeared the slogan that only vaguely described social property as "property of everybody and nobody at the same time".

High taxes on personal incomes have severely limited the material basis of self-management in all “basic organizations of associated labor”. Part of former state property just assumed para-statal forms. Thus investment fonds were transformed into banks that were supposed to make autonomous investment decisions, but in reality they were very dependent on decisions of local, republican and federal politicians.

To the extent to which social property had the character of group ownership of the employed, there existed on the micro level the tendency to distribute as high wages as possible at the expense of productive investments and irrespective of the productivity level. Another tendency of group form of ownership was the realization of earnings not on the basis of work done, but on the basis of natural monopoly or the achievement of more favorable economic conditions for the given economy branches on the proto-market of merchandises, through political pressures.

Notwithstanding all these deficiencies, self-managing institutions nevertheless gave people the necessary opportunity to experience directly the contradictory character of their own interests. This contradiction is too often overlooked while the accent is put exclusively on the satisfaction of just one interest. Maximization of wages and minimization of taxes is the demand of people when they make decisions from the standpoint of their role of producers. To be achieved, these demands imply maximization of prices of their products and reduction of budget sources for social benefits. These consequences, however, are contrary to the demands of people when they make decisions from the standpoint of their role of consumers.

Yugoslav self-management theory and practice confronted these complex problems of development of participatory society and ownership transformation during four decades. These problems were made even more difficult by the fact of geographic concentration of different economic sectors in regions inhabited by different ethnic and confessional South Slave groups. Thus different ethnicities have inherited unequal conditions for industrial development from previous centuries of Habsburg or Ottoman Empire occupation. Inhereted differences were deapened through the transformation of eight administrative political units of the Yugoslav federation into sovereign states. Their economies became ever more autarchic and rounded up within respective Republican and Provincial borders. Mobility of production factors diminished rapidly.

Among multiple causes for the violent destruction of Yugoslavia in the beginning of the nineties, important role was played precisely by powerful internal and external social interests to stop and eliminate this pioneering massive attempt to introduce alternative model of participatory economy and society. Members of both bureaucratic and technocratic fraction of the collective owners class began to seek in the privatization of social property the more secure mechanism of reproduction of their privileged social position, than was the previous mechanism of nomination to ruling positions in society. Republican and Provincial political and economic leaderships proceeded to delimit their own “national” market and direct producers for the exploitation. In this they were very much encouraged and supported by political and economic representatives of multinational capital. Ruling elites of EU and USA began the aggressive race to reconquer control over resources and markets of Central, Southeastern and Eastern Europe after demise of Soviet Union and COMECON block (Vratuša(-Žunjić) Vera, 1997).

Social-democratic welfare state

Less ambitious program of socialization of productive forces institutionalized in the social-democratic welfare state came into crisis as well. It is characterized by progressive taxation, nationalization of certain branches of economy, worker consultative participation in decision-making, partial planning, social security, universal free education. This model includes the step by step introduction of reforms in the sphere of distribution, having for the aim the expansion of the equality of rights and after that also reduction of inequality of life opportunities for subordinated and exploited social groups.

The increase of workers’ participation rights and earnings in industrially developed countries, caused increased production costs and reduced compatibility on the world market. In fact social-democratic model of welfare state is not universally applicable within the framework of unchallenged dominant capitalist relations of production. Every serious attempt to redistribute social wealth at the expense of the profits of multinational capital, and in the favor of middle layers and workers in central zones, and especially in favor of producing classes of the entire world, would diminish the profit rate and motivation of the entrepreneurs to accumulate. In that way the very existence of capitalist mode of production would be called into question.

If trade unions and direct participation partisans and researchers do not take initiative, there exists real danger that private employers and the state will use their passivity to adopt the idea of participation to their own interests. Sophisticated technology imposes the need to secure not only physical but also cognitive and emotional involvement of the employed. To secure high level of quality and productivity, employers are forced to offer to their more qualified employees not only material, but also psychological incentives like enhancement of the “organizational culture”, feeling of belonging, loyalty and stake-holding of individual employee in the respective company. These incentives and legal opportunities for participation, however, usually preserve oligarchic decision-making power structure within the company largely intact.

Conclusion

Both the state and market form of regulation of social reproduction remain within the framework of capital social relations. They entail all forms of self-alienation of people and the disintegration of social community. The persistence of merchandise and monetary market relations, with their characteristic fetishism presenting relations of people as relations between things, are not appropriate for the transformation of the general private ownership oriented way of life. It is characterized by fixation on the material and exclusive appropriation of the scarce natural and human resources.

Imperatives of profit accumulation demand the reduction of production costs. One way to deal with higher production costs is to pass them on to the consumers. This way is soon exhausted by limited buying power of broad layers of population. Most often used production costs' reduction mechanism is the use of capital and technology intensive exploitation of human and natural resources. This mechanism causes enormous “external” costs in the terms of pollution and depletion of unrenewable resources. The third solution is sought in the transfer of work intensive industries into predominantly agricultural regions with half-proletarianized and cheap working force.

In spite of the demonstrated flexibility of capitalism as still dominant mode of reproduction in the world proportions, the maneuvering space for countering the tendency of profit rate to fall is becoming ever smaller. First of all, the global expansion of the labor force comodification is diminishing the possibility of the production costs reduction through the over-exploitation of politically weak and economically half-proletarianized work force of the periphery of the world capitalist system. Periphery, namely, becomes ever less agricultural and rural in the process. Multinational capital is also not able to eliminate completely the social benefits that were conquered by the powerful worker’s movement in the central zones. Opposition of multinational capital to formation of the state budget at the expense of profit, causes the fiscal crisis of the “welfare state”. It becomes ever less able to mitigate social conflicts through partial reforms in the realm of distribution.

The negative dialectics of the internal contradiction between limited aims of capital accumulation by private owners of the production means and unlimited potentialities of social production, demonstrate only the historical boundaries and unsustainability of this production mode. For the reversal of its inherent tendency to produce economic and political crises and wars, it is necessary to consciously politically mobilize subjective forces and to unite them on the international level around the alternative project of the societal organization.

Having in mind that private ownership is only the legal expression of the class division of labor, non-capitalist mode of social reproduction must entail abolishment of the monopoly of any particular social group to the creative, planning and controlling work functions, on the one hand, and the reduction of other social groups to routine, executing work functions, on the other. Collective ownership of freely associated producers and consumers is the only kind of collective ownership congruous with the double, both economic and political emancipation. It contributes to elimination of the class division of labor, giving everybody concerned the chance to participate in the decisions what, how and how much is going to be produced and consumed. It implicates the development of human senses and creative capabilities for the enjoyment of scarce material and human resources. This enables their true appropriation, that has no limits on the spiritual plane.

This alternative model of societal organization has the chance to be realized as an alternative to social system dominated by class division of labor, if it is consciously realized at the same time on both the functional level of production, through the self-management of producers, as well as on the territorial level, as self-management of consumers in the commune.

Actual world depression and financial crisis accompanied by mass unemployment contain the opposite potentialities of the destructive third world war, on the one hand, and emancipatory social revolution, on the other. Presently, in the early spring of 2000, NATO military “fist” of the multinational capital, after using the Orwelian excuse of “humanitarian bombing” last year, still attempts to realize the control of strategically important Balkans. It is the spring board for the direct and indirect control of raw materials (Caspian oil above all), work force and markets in entire Euro-Asia. This can easily escalate into nuclear confrontation in which the human civilization would be destroyed.

The condition for the realization of the second potentiality is the renewal of hope and faith of vast masses of people throughout the world that there exists the possibility of the improvement of the life situation of the dominated and exploited overwhelming majority of the world population. This improvement can not be provided by society in which dominate private capitalist property relations. It has been demonstrated repeatedly, most recently in former countries of “real socialism” that this historical form of ownership relationships reproduces itself reproducing social inequalities and unfreedom for the majority of non-owners. Implementation of “liberal reforms” and privatization according to the imperative "recommendations" of financial institutions of multinational capital, caused catastrophic fall in production and living standards of population in all but few former real-socialist countries that only received massive capital inflow.

Citizens of Yugoslavia, in spite of already almost a decade long economic strangulation by economic blockade and in spite of savage bombing by forbidden cassette bombs and depleted uranium for 78 days, demonstrated once again the courageous resolve to risk death in order to attempt to oppose colonial and neocolonial enslavement. Maintenance of the most positive aspects of self-management experience, grass-roots initiative, self-organization and participation in decision making, that were renewed during the bombing, would be the most important asset in the attempt to implement participative development strategy in spite of the adverse conditions. Experience of neighboring countries that did not get expected qualitative capital investments in return for their complacency to all demands of NATO elites, indicates that it is illusory to expect that the boost for restructuring and development of economy would come from that corner.

The transition from capitalist to post-capitalist form of the life reproduction organization, is not and can not be the result of objective economic and social laws' automatism. Indispensable ingredient is the conscious human action or “transforming praxis” aiming at the restructuration of existing social relations and limitations to better life.

REFERENCES:

Vratuša-Žunjić, V., 1991: Strategije razvoja zemalja u razvoju (Development strategies of developing countries) Phd thesis, University of Belgrade, Faculty of philosophy, Department of sociology, Belgrade

-1997: The Intrinsic Connection Between Endogenous and Exogenous Factors of Social (dis)Integration - a Sketch of Yugoslav Case, Dialogue No.22 and No.23, Paris

Summary

In the paper is elaborated the thesis that intrinsically contradictory character of the process of socialization of productive forces is the main source of the cyclical schifts between etatistic and market model of regulation of productive and entire social relationships. Contradictory social interests involved in socialization process account for the fact that periods of economic democracy’s emancipatory breakthroughs, are followed by periods of its repressive setbacks.

PARTICIPATIVNO DRUŠTVO I PROTIVREČNOSTI PODRUŠTVLJAVANJA

Rezime

U radu se razvija teza da intrinsično protivrečan karakter procesa podruštvljavanja proizvodnih snaga predstavlja glavni izvor cikličnih smena između etatističkog i tržišnog modela regulisanja proizvodnih i ukupnih društvenih odnosa. Protivrečni društveni interesi uključeni u proces podruštvljavanja objašnjavaju činjenicu da periode emancipatorskih prodora ekonomske demokratije smenjuju periodi represivnog nazadovanja.